


Waste the Night

by sidneyprescott



Series: Infinite Playlist [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, F/M, Rare Pairings, mentions of bill and harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 21:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15276216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidneyprescott/pseuds/sidneyprescott
Summary: Neville isn't sorry for kissing Fleur.





	Waste the Night

**Author's Note:**

> based off of waste the night by 5sos.

(9:32 pm) **where r u**

(9:36 pm) **???**

(9:41 pm) **hello?**

(9:59 pm) **i’m sorry**

 

_⚘ fleur started sharing location with you._

 

* * *

 

Neville stands outside the campus diner for ten, twenty, thirty seconds; he wipes his palms on his jeans one, two, three times; he holds the door open for five, six, seven people. He’s stalling. She’s sitting in a booth at the back, blonde hair piled on her head, scrolling through her phone and completely unaware he’s even there until he’s _right there._

And then Fleur looks at him. She’s beautiful even in shitty fluorescent lighting.

“Hi,” he says. Wonders if she hears him at all over his pounding heart.

“Really?” she growls. Yeah, she heard him.

Neville takes a chance, sits across from her, squeezes his palms together between his knees and hunches closer, and exhales when Fleur doesn’t immediately smack him upside the head.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” he admits.

“So you are not sorry?” she crosses her arms over her chest and leans back against the seat. “Because that is what you texted me.”

Fleur holds her phone up as evidence like Neville doesn’t know exactly what he said; he glances between her and the screen and shrugs. Her nostrils flare, just the tiniest bit, the most unnoticeable bit, but he notices. Neville notices the same way he’s noticed everything else:

  1. she always takes left turns
  2. the drunker she gets, the less English she speaks
  3. the stick N pokes that litter her ankles are all flowers



Neville wonders if she knows.

He starts. He stops. One, two, three times, before Harry’s words whisper at the back of his mind and demand his thirty seconds of courage, and he’s speaking before he can scare himself out of it.

“I’m sorry I ran off on you,” Neville starts, slow, steady, blinking at the wooden surface washed green under shitty fluorescent lighting, before his fingers curl in determination and he wrenches his eyes up to meet hers. “That was shitty. I shouldn’t have ran off on you. But I’m not going to apologize for kissing you, so you can forget that. I shouldn’t have to! You blew smoke in my mouth! I should be demanding an apology from _you._ ”

Fleur gapes at him, blinking, disbelieving, sputtering: _“Excuse me?”_

“Half my friends are smokers and I’ve never seen any of them blowing smoke in each other’s mouths, Fleur. And then you laughed at me, so I’m not apologizing for kissing you.”

“I ‘ave a _boyfriend_ , Neville.”

“So shouldn’t you be apologizing to him for kissing me back?”

A beat.

Two.

Three.

Her face softens to blank with a hint of surprise, a hint of rosy cheeks, and her throat bobs like she’s swallowing smoke.

“I’m not apologizing for kissing you when you kissed me back.” Neville states, firmly, but his hands shake and wring together on the table.

Fleur doesn’t say anything for a while. She sits there but she goes on a journey of microexpressions. Opens her mouth a few times like she’s going to say something, anything, maybe apologize for blowing smoke in his mouth and then kissing him around a laugh right after, but she doesn’t. Not for a while. Maybe a minute, or four, or eight, until her phone buzzes with an incoming call from Bill. Fleur glances at it but doesn’t make a move to answer.

“Shouldn’t you get that?” Neville asks.

“I don’t ‘ave an emoji for ‘im.” she responds.

“What does that─” oh. _Oh._

The call ends. Buzzing stops. She swipes at her screen, then slides the phone across the table at him, text messages open. No one’s got emojis─ not Bill, not Viktor, not even her sister─ but Neville. A frog, a lion, a fencer, followed by his name.

Neville wonders how long she’s known.

Gaze meets hers again and flowers bloom in the spaces between his ribcage. He wonders what this means, wonders about Bill, wonders so much so that he doesn’t notice her slap a few dollars down on the table and stand, fists buried in her jacket pockets, waiting for him.

“I do not want to waste the night.” she says, measured, like she’s been holding her breath around the words, practiced them down to the syllable, and finally got to exhale.

“Could I kiss you again?” he asks.

“After I break up with Bill.”

“Er, that easy?”

She narrows her eyes a second, lets him hold the door open for her, brushes hair out of her face when the wind blows on the street. “Nothing about this ‘as been easy for me, Neville. There is… much for me to think about. A lot I already thought I knew, but the only thing I know is that I do not want to watch you walk away from me again. I know that more than my name.”

“I thought you didn’t know,” Neville replies. Hopes she gets what he means. Wonders if Bill would get what he means.

Fleur looks at him then, brows twitching closer together, like she wants to call him stupid. “I ‘ave always known.”


End file.
